Friday, March 8, 2013

Death Beckons

William Henry Margetson

(1861-1940)

-Gabriel Diego Delgado

gabrield@jrmooneygalleries.com

210-828-8214

William Henry Margetson studied at the South Kensington
Schools and at the RoyalAcademy, where he
exhibited from 1885. Known more as an illustrator for literary classics like The
Tiger of Mysore, Trefoil, The Spider's Eye, A March on London, Red Morn, The
Lights of Sydney, and Straits of Time by Christopher Hare; Margetson executed a
series of small paintings he titled “In the Straits of Time”- a collective of
watercolor/gauche paintings and prints that were based on a play of the book by
Hare.

Usually upbeat and full of whimsical muse, Margetson’s
female figures border on illustrious Art Deco beauties, however with “In the
Straits of Time”, he forces us to ponder
the lives of the misfortunate. Recounting
tails of death, famine, misery and the Black Plague, Margetson provides a
monotone palette of black and white melancholic images that evoke a sense of
dire straits.

Of the 5 works available, one can be singled out as a
masterfully denoted summarization of such a series. The singular painting
depicts the scene in the book/play where four completely different types of
people inhabit the same room; each wholly concerned about the deteriorating
health of a little girl.

Grimly silhouetted in the background, a Catholic Nun and a
Victorian Englishman lurk off to the left hand side. Concealed in shadows, they
come to represent so much more than mere mortal aspirations. Metaphorically, the older man’s grimace and
fragility mocks the innocence and jubilation of the adolescent little girl,
while the Nun ponders an existential afterlife bound by the glory of faith, accepting
of her inevitable fate and infantile demise.

Stark contrasts can be drawn between the two characters
[caregiver and child]. Head wrap, shawl, bedding, and nightgown give sterile
misconstrued assumptions of purity. Engulfed
in a tender embrace, the motherly figures have eyes that are shut with
tenderness; a sentimentality one can only give with sincere compassion; while
the dazed and widen eyes of the child turn a gaze to the unknown, with an apprehension
of a beckoning light drawing ever closer.